High-Maintenance Home Day

My house is being very demanding right now.

It's really cold, low 40's, and time to suck it up and turn on the heat. It's a Maine thing I picked up in college, that turning on the heat is somehow a surrender. Most people I know from up there wait as long as possible before turning on the boiler or lighting the stove. You know who you are.

Knowing that the time would soon come, I recruited my brother a few weeks ago to help me figure out the relatively-new oil burner and forced-hot water heating system. It took a while, largely due to an annoying digital thermostat, but eventually the system kicked in and the baseboard heating units warmed up. We had heat at the Archer house.

I shut off the thermostat, confident that all I'd have to do is turn it back on when the cold finally won. Well, when I turned on the heat before going to bed last night and it was just 55 degrees in the house this morning, I realized something was wrong.

We still don't know what the problem is with the burner. Could be the oldest electrical switch I have ever seen, the one that appears to have been manufactured the year after electricity was invented. The one that powers the oil burner. Could be something to do with the burner itself, or maybe the lock-outs, the relays, the oil line, the damned thermostat. Really, could be anything. And I don't want to pay for an emergency Sunday service call. So I called to leave a message to make a service appointment with the oil company for non-peak hours.

So the whole heat thing really frustrated me today, as I feel like I always live in houses that are too cold and I'm really tired of it. Aaron brought up the space heater for the living room. It was when he tried to vacuum off the same outlet as the space heater and the TV's surge strip that we blew a fuse in the living room and had to figure that out. It was a simple fix, but after the oil burner not starting I just didn't care any more.

The fuse was pretty easily sorted out. Not so much with the heat. So we have the space heater and blankets, as well as the dubious heat-producing abilities of a few Dura-Logs. It's not going to get below freezing, so we'll survive until the oil guy can come over. Cold doesn't win just yet. Though I can promise you that if there were a newborn in this house, we'd have sucked it up and paid the emergency service rates to get some heat in this house.

Part of my frustration was that it's been on my to-do list to have the damned oil furnace serviced and I just haven't gotten it done. I also regret not having paid attention during the home inspection. I wasn't feeling well that day and spent most of the time on the previous owner's couch.

Speaking of the previous owner, we realized today that they actually did have a water purification system, but the filter hasn't been changed in 3.5 years. They're supposed to last 3 months. No wonder the water tastes like moldy ass and we go through a Brita filter a month.

I take comfort in feeling like they weren't malicious about neglecting things in this house, but they just weren't totally forthcoming. Not that I blame them. Or maybe they just didn't know how to cope so they didn't. There are a lot of things that have turned up in this house that are just little issues. Nothing terrible, just an accumulation of stuff the last people probably inherited and couldn't be bothered with fixing either. I can understand that. I resent having to be surprised by it, but I bought this house and have a responsibility to figure it out and fix its problems.